Can you crowdsource transformational change?

Author: Faith ForsterEmail: faith.forster@pinipa.comPhone: +44 (0) 7545 009 356

AbstractWe have seen that crowdsourcing ideas generates far more innovative solutions. So why not also leverage that power to work out the best way to make the solution come to life?

This makes change a truly collaborative effort. It completely changes the dynamic from a push exercise to a pull exercise. It also changes the role of the project team from being responsible for delivery to being facilitators, so that the people who need to own the change are the ones who voluntarily take responsibility for making it happen.

Rather than wasting a lot of energy trying to convince ‘the crowd’ on why a change is a good thing to do, a leader can focus on creating the conditions that encourages initiative… and then let the crowd do its magic. The energy generated will deliver far greater business value, significantly faster and at less cost than any project team possibly could.

People will naturally support what they have been involved in creating. In an environment that expects resistance as a matter of course, having concerns raised and addressed in a constructive way, and using co-creation to develop a design that everyone believes in, is a remarkable twist on traditional practices.

BiographyFaith is a recognised leader in the change management field and has played an active role in supporting and shaping the profession. She was the Founder of the Change Management Institute (CMI) in the UK and is now a member of the global CMI Board. Faith is also the Founder & CEO of Pinipa.com, an innovative web-application that enables crowd-sourcing to shape and deliver business transformation and change. 

Faith has over 10 years experience delivering some of the most complex changes in industry, including cultural change in a global bank following the global financial crisis, setting up new operations in post war Iraq, and developing a global operating model for a major oil company following a recent disaster. Faith has delivered change in the UK, across EMEA, the Middle East, Australia and South Africa.

Can you crowdsource transformational change?

In business, innovation and technology have become intricately linked. Increasingly, they are seen as primary drivers for revenue growth opportunities,i as well as addressing the threat of external disruption. But is there an opportunity to go beyond idea generation and extend this way of working to actually make change happen in a more collaborative, technology enabled way?

What do we mean when we say crowdsourcing?

The concept of crowdsourcing has demonstrated huge value in many different contexts, from developing new products and services, marketing campaigns, funding businesses and even recruitment. Crowdsourced ratings and reviews inform many decisions that we make. This can include the purchase of products from online stores, the selection of a holiday destination and the booking of taxi services. It has become an integral part of our daily lives today.

As James Surowiecki suggested in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, ‘decisions taken by a large group, even if the individuals within the group aren't smart, are always better than decisions made by small numbers of expertsii.’

Merriam Websteriii provides a nice and simple definition: “Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers”.

Why is it so powerful? Crowdsourcing, and the technology that supports it, makes it easier than ever before to tap into a hugely diverse group and leverage their range of experiences and thinking to input into a problem or solution. It significantly reduces traditional boundaries of involving people, such as geography, organisational silos, and with external parties such as suppliers and customers. It allows us to cross-pollinate ideas and perspectives in a way that was unimaginable ten years ago. It is in this cross-pollination that lies a huge opportunity to create new and innovative ideas and solutions.

What does this mean for business?

Within the context of business this has significant ramifications. It raises questions on some of the most highly sacrosanct concepts, such as competition.

The pharmaceutical industry is a fantastic example of where traditional competitors are collaborating to develop new products significantly faster and cheaper but still actively compete when going to market. Tesla recently released all of their patented technology for electric cars, citing the need to accelerate the global movement towards more sustainable practices in automobile development than they can deliver on their owniv. By opening their doors and vaults, they have made themselves true market leaders.

Where arguably one of the greatest challenges of the past decade has been the ‘war on talent’, crowdsourcing reduces our reliance on talent, as everyone is considered an expert. It creates an opportunity to engage people outside of their day job, leveraging creative spirit and a wide variety of skills and backgrounds across the organisation’s network. Recent research from a UK government initiative, Engage 4 Success, shows engagement levels in organisations today are woefully low and that more engaged people are more productive.v So it follows that there is a significant opportunity to leverage the energy of our workforces far more effectively by enabling them to contribute outside of their traditional areas of responsibility.

Crowdsourcing also creates an opportunity to connect different generations and challenge traditional ways of working that do not meet the fast-paced needs of the current and future marketplace. Where in the past, ‘grey hair’ gave you power that could not be questioned,

today’s Digital Natives and their ability to draw on networks and knowledge is forcing the Baby Boomers to compete in new and interesting ways that is healthy for everyone.

So how can crowdsourcing help us deliver change?

Business transformation and change is well recognised as a painful exercise, that takes a long time, is expensive, and notoriously difficult to make successful. Anyone who has experienced this pain will admit it has something to do with effective engagement of the people involved.

Generally change programmes dance to the tune of a project plan. Unfortunately, these rarely accommodate the time and effort it takes to have meaningful conversations about where the business is at, where it needs to be and all of the possible ways it can get there… and address the emotional rollercoaster along the way. Rather, there is often a predetermined destination, with the lack of true authenticity in engagement activities clear to everyone except perhaps those organising them.

What if we made this engagement meaningful, a truly collaborative effort, by using crowdsourcing? We have seen that crowdsourcing ideas generate far more innovative solutions. But once a decision is made on what to do, this collaborative way of working often falls off a cliff. If the crowd can create far superior solutions, why not also leverage that power to work out the best way to make the solution come to life?

This completely changes the dynamic of making change happen. Rather than wasting a lot of energy trying to convince ‘the crowd’ on why a change is a good thing to do, a leader can focus on creating the conditions that encourages initiative… and then let the crowd do its magic. The energy generated will deliver far greater business value, significantly faster and at less cost than any project team possibly could.

How can we use crowdsourcing to manage transformational change programmes?

There are numerous opportunities to seek active contribution on an ongoing basis from a wide range of people, to help shape and deliver the change. Every change is different, so I do not pretend to include a comprehensive list of how it could be used, but hopefully this will give you a taste of the possibilities to help generate your own ideas.

1. The vision on where the company needs to be 2. What we should do differently to get there3. Who should be involved4. What are the things we need to think about to be ‘ready’ for change – both from a

broad business perspective (culture, leadership, business performance) and at a more practical level for implementation (implications on day-to-day working practices)

5. What are the benefits and risks of doing this 6. What needs to happen to make it work, or the implementation approach7. Feedback and monitoring whether we are on track (both quantitative and

qualitative)8. Reality checks on timings, implementation activities and other considerations9. Knowledge sharing, training, implementation support and lessons learnt 10. Both the qualitative and quantitative benefits achieved.

The core idea behind the crowdsourcing change is enabling co-creation. People will naturally support what they have been involved in creating. In an environment that expects resistance as a matter of course, having concerns raised and addressed openly and in a constructive way through co-creation is a remarkable twist on traditional practices.

But it doesn’t have to stop at creation. As Peter Senge said in The Fifth Discipline, ‘people don’t resist change, they resist being changed’.vi Once you have understood from the crowd what we should do and how we should do it, there is a great opportunity to then leverage those people to actually do it, rather than making a project team responsible for delivery. This is true ownership.

This also means it can happen faster as you have more resources mobilised. It makes the change initiative cheaper to deliver as you are leveraging existing resources rather than paying for additional people. And it makes the change more likely to be successful as the people involved have a vested interest in seeing it work.

What does it take to make crowdsourcing effective in delivering change?

1. Cultural contextIt is important to be aware of the cultural context within which you are trying to make this change happen. As a spectrum of collaborative ways of working, I find this model particularly usefulvii:

Inform > consult > involve > collaborate > empower

It represents a progression in the perceived value of working together. If your organisation is only at the stage of ‘informing’ people, so it does not see the value in consulting people on things relevant to them, you will have a difficult time trying to establish a collaborative way of working.

To establish collaboration as an integral part of your organisations culture requires a significant level of trust, and willingness to relinquish control and see where the crowd takes you. This is particularly important for senior leaders. They need to have a level of comfort that allows them to open up a problem or opportunity to the crowd, rather than starting with an announcement on a solution that they intend to implement. Co-creation needs to start at the beginning, understanding the need to change and all of the ways this could be done, not once a decision has been made on what to do.

2. Technology-enabled In the same way that innovation and technology have become intricately linked, the ability to tap into a broad network of knowledge and experience also requires a platform to support that level of engagement in an efficient and transparent way.

Today’s social or collaborative technologies enable us to create conversations between many-to-many, rather than relying on one-way or two-way communications. It also reduces the reliance on meetings and workshops for input, creating a continuous conversation that reaches across geographic, functional and other organisational barriers.

In addition to collaborative conversations, for this to be effective within the context of business transformation requires a careful balance between having some structure, to

guide everyone on the right things to think about so their input is meaningful and directly contributes to making the change successful, while not over-complicating it so as to be overwhelming for non-project or change specialists.

2. Role of the project teamThis is a new area for technology to be utilised to support a better way of working. Despite the significant risks and costs associated with delivering transformation programmes, they are typically managed using spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, with all of their limitations. In the same way that technology created a fear of people losing their jobs in the 1990s, this has left some project people wondering what this means for their role.

While crowdsourcing business transformation does not replace the need for experts, it does change the nature of their role from being responsible for delivery to acting as facilitators. The different dynamic created by ‘the crowd’ shaping and delivering the transformation means the project team exist to guide, advise, support, monitor progress… and then let the crowd do its magic. The emphasis is on using existing resources within the business, the people who actually need to do something different, to make the change happen themselves.

The following diagram summarises the underlying shift in the way this dynamic changes:

From ToTelling/ selling Co-creationStakeholder management CollaborationProject delivery FacilitationControl EmpowermentLinear change process/ methodology Dynamic, iterative change

4. Ongoing engagement of the community The challenges with adoption of collaborative technology have been well documented, with significant lessons learnt and progress made in recent yearsviii. The key to making this successful is clearly establishing a purpose for collaborating.

The benefit of using collaborative technologies within a change context is not only a clear purpose, but often an emotional charged one. Change inevitably brings uncertainty; best case scenario this causes curiosity, worst case it causes stress. Either way, establishing a channel for that nervous energy which people can access at a time that suits them empowers people to a much greater extent than we have historically been able to do.

The effectiveness of having this channel available will be determined by the extent to which the platform is used as an opportunity to actively involve people throughout the change journey, from understanding the problem or opportunity through to making the solution real. If it is used simply to communicate discussions already held, or worse, decisions made, people will sense the lack of authenticity in the collaboration and will not waste their energy contributing.

Ok, sounds interesting, but what about the realities I face?

Yes. As mentioned above, this presents a very different way of working to traditional approaches to change. And I can’t emphasise the importance of understanding the implications for your prevailing organisational culture. These are some of the objections we’ve heard and how we or our customers have responded to them.

1. Our change project is very sensitive and needs to be kept secretThere are definitely situations where there is a legitimate need to keep things under wraps, at least for a while. For example, where there are market sensitivities, political sensitivities or significant implications on people’s jobs. That’s ok, the need to limit who gets involved when doesn’t change the opportunity for the people involved to work in a far more collaborative and effective way.

2. Just get on with it, we don’t need loads of ideas, just tell them what they need to do

Co-creation needs to start at the beginning of the process, of understanding the need (or opportunity) to change and all of the possible ways to go about it. It is ok to have some ideas on the things you would like to do, these can be shared with the crowd and they may or may not agree with them. But if you are already committed to a particular solution, this is not the right approach for you. This statement is a classic sign that your culture is at the ‘inform’ step of the model above, and the leaders do not see the value in involving people.

3. One person needs to make decision, we can’t let everyone make the decisionsCollaborating with people doesn’t necessarily give them the right to make decisions. There can be significant resource implications on decisions on what changes to make and when, these need to be carefully considered and determined by the person accountable. However by having involved the crowd prior to making that decision, they should be in a much stronger position to make a good decision, and as long as they haven’t completely ignored what the crowd said, people will understand the basis of the decision far better so are much more likely to be supportive.

4. We already have a collaboration platform, can we use that?

You can, that’s a good start as it helps to generate the ongoing and visible conversation, which is great for understanding the need to change, generating ideas, and gathering a community with a shared purpose. But to actually make change happen requires some structure, which is where general collaboration platforms are insufficient to support shaping and delivering complex, transformational change.

5. Are there types of change that this is better suited to? This collaborative way of working is delivers the best results where innovation is part of the change agenda, when behavioural change is particularly important for example cultural change or new operating models, or a more dynamic or agile method is being used, for example digital transformation (rather than a waterfall system implementation). It can also substantially improve engagement where there are disparate teams across organisational silos or geographies.

6. Can we use our existing methodology and do this? Yes, this approach can be used to complement an existing methodology. The things listed above where you could leverage crowdsourcing are typically addressed by any

transformation methodology. However using crowdsourcing would mean the way you go about doing those things would be quite different.

7. Do we still need to do our normal engagement activities such as workshops? Using a crowdsourcing platform to support business transformation creates another channel for people to be actively involved in the change on an ongoing basis. There is still significant value in getting people together in a room and having meaningful conversations. But it may change the nature of the conversation you have in the room, and how often you need to do this.

8. Do we need to get everyone involved, including front line staff? This is a judgement call for the leaders driving the change. The more people involved, and the more diverse the group, the more powerful it is. But there may be legitimate reasons why you can not get everyone involved for the whole journey.

i PwC Consulting, Harnessing the power of crowdsourcing Does your company stand out in a crowd? Summer 2011ii James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of crowds, 2004iii http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcingiv http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-youv Engage 4 Success, The evidence, Employee engagement task group, November 2012vi Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, Random House, reprinted 2006vii Find out from Marc Wrightviii McKinsey Quarterly, Organising the networked organisation for change, Bughin, Chui and Pollak, February 2014